Signal-actuating mechanism.



H. A. HOESCHEN, SIGNAL ACTUATING MECHANISM.

APPLICATION FILED MAY 3, 1913- Patented July '3 1917.

FFTCE.

HENRY A. HOESCHEN, OF OMAHA, NEBRASKA, ASSIGNOR TO HOESCHEN MANUFAC- TURING COMPANY, OF OMAHA, NEBRASKA, A CORPORATION OF NEBRASKA.

SIGNAL-ACTUATING MECHANISM.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Patented July 3, 1917.

Application filed May 3, 1913. Serial No. 765,398.

To all whom it may concern.-

Be it known that I, HENRY A. I-loEsoHnN, a citizen of the United States, and a resident of Omaha, in the county of Douglas and State of Nebraska, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Signal-Actuating Mechanism, of which the following is a specification.

My invention relates to railway signaling mechanism, and especially to signal actuating and controlling means operated by the passage of trains over particular portions of a railway track. It is the object of my invention to provide a simple and effective device for utilizing the impact or percussion of car-wheels upon a rail to control or actuate signal mechanism.

Constructions embodying my invention are illustrated in the accompanying drawings, in which Figure 1 is a transverse sectional view of mechanism adapted to actuate a lever or other mechanical device forming a part of suitable signaling mechanism, Fig. 2 is an end view of the same,"Fig. 3 is a transverse vertical sectional view of a magneto-electric generator adapted to be actuated by the impact of car-wheels upon a rail, Fig. 4: is a longitudinal vertical sectional View of the same, Fig. 5 is a detail end view of the casing-hanger, Fig. 6 is a detail side view of the same, and Fig. 7 is a horizontal sectional view of the plane of the line wrc of Fig. 3.

In carrying out my invention I make use of certain well-known properties of elastic solid bodies involved in the transmission through them of mechanical forces. The said properties may be illustrated as follows: Suppose three bodies of elastic material to be placed in contact with each other so that each is free to move along a line passing through the others. Such conditions are fulfilled by three balls of such material freely suspended in positions such that they contact serially along a horizontal line passing through their centers of gravity. If the ball at one end of the series be raised and permitted to fall against the adjoining one, the momentum of the first will be trans mitted through the intermediate ball and imparted to the third ball which, if its mass is the same as that of the first ball, will move on in substantially the same manner as would the first had its motion not been interfered with. The first ball will be brought to rest, and no displacement of the intermediate ball will occur, the force passing through it in the form of a compressional or impact-wave through the elastic substance of which it is formed.

The wheels of a railway train, when passing along a track at any considerable speed, are constantly striking the rails with percussive or hammerlike blows of great force. Such blows result from slight imperfections which, in practice, always exist in the contacting surfaces of the wheels and rails, the surfaces of the wheels never being perfectly circular, nor the surfaces of the rails perfectly rectilinear. The force of the blows is, of course, proportional to the degree of imperfection of the contacting surfaces, and is especially noticeable at joints in the rails. The force of the blows may be insta-nced by the pounding of socalled flat car-wheels occasioned by improper braking, wherein the actual flattening is so minute as to be hardly appreciable.

I have found that when a body is held yieldingly against the lower side of a rail, the percussive blows of the wheels of a train passing over the track are transmitted through the rail to such body so that the same will be thrown away from the rail with great force, although the rail is not appreciably depressed, deflected or moved.

The action of the rail in this case is analogous to that of the intermediate ball of elastic material in the instance first cited.

Referring now to Figs. 1 and 2 of the drawings, there is shown a railway track rail 1 having a casing connected with the base-flange thereof for containing the concussion-receiving body. Said casing has a depending tubular portion 2 with a laterally extending lug 3 at each side near the upper end thereof. The casing is suspended from the rail by means of hangers each comprising pair of jaws 4- adapted to engage the edges of the rail base-flange, a bolt 5 pass ing through the jaws below the rail to hold them in engagement therewith, and a crossbar 6 of relatively flexible material, of which the ends are secured to the lower ends of the jaws 4L and the central part passes beneath and engages one of the lugs 3 at the side of the tubular portion of the casing. The crossbar 6 constitutes a shock-absorbing member which reduces the force of and tends to pre vent the transmission to the casing of the concussions to which the rail is subject dur ing the passage of trains over it. WVithin the casing 2 is the receiving-body 7, which is supported on one. arm of a lever 8 fulcrumed in a lateral extension 9 of the casing 2, the body 7 being suitably recessed, as shown, so that the lever can extend into it in such a manner that the body will hang therefrom in a vertical position. The upwardly extending arm of the lever 8 is suitably connected with any mechanical device that it may be desired to actuate during the passage of car-wheels over the rail. In the construction shown, a wire 10 extends from the lever 8 to a lever 11,. the latter being actuated by a spring 12 to hold the wire under tension, the wire passing through an inclosing tube or pipe 13 which is connected with the casing-portion 9. It will be understood that the lever 11 is not intended as an actual representation of any specific mechanism, but is merely a conventional indication of any movable part of a signal mechanism that it may be desired to actuate. The force of the spring 12, transmitted through the described connections, serves to hold the body 7 yieldingly against the inner end of a button 14: which is carried at the central part of a flexible diaphragm 15 disposed at the upper end of the casing 2, the outer end of the button contacting with the lower side of the rail. The button 14k is a concussiontransmitting member between the rail and the receiving-body 7, while the elastic diaphragm is concussion-absorbing device which serves to complete the incasing of the receiving-body, permitting the latter to be actuated from outside the casing with but little diversion of the actuating force to the main-body of the casing.

With the described mechanism, especially when it is located near a rail-joint where the continuity of the wheel-engaging surface is interrupted, the impact of a car-wheel passing along the rail is transmitted through the rail and the button ll to the receivingbody 7 so that the latter is impelled forcibly downward. The receiving-body is comparatively massive and, being thus started into rapid motion, has a momentum capable of doing a relatively large amount of work which, obviously, may be utilized as desired.

In Figs. 3, 4 and 7 is shown a magneto electric generator adapted to be actuated by the wheel-impact upon a rail. A casing 21 is provided which is hung from the baseflange of the rail 1 in the same manner as the casing 2. The receiving-body 27 has a neck-portion 24 which extends through the upper part of the casing and directly engages the lower side of the rail, being normally held yieldingly in contact with the same by means of a spring 22 of which one end rests on the bottom of the casing and the other extends into a recess formed in the lower end of the body 27. At the upper end polepieces, and a pivoted armature 33 normally engaging the ends of the pole-pieces the armature having a spring 34L for returning it to the poles when displaced therefrom. The free end of the armature extends beneath a shoulder formed near the lower end of the receiving-body 27, so that downward movement of said body will move the armature away from the poles. The coils 32 are connected in an electrical circuit made through wires 35, and are preferably also connected in parallel with a shunt-switch controlled by the body 27. Such a switch is formed by two insulated contact-pieces 36 and 37, the latter being of springy material and tending to move out of engagement with the other. The shuntswitch is disposed in the upper part of the casing, as shown in Fig. at, and the contactpiece 37 is engageable by the upper end of the body 27 so that when the same is in its normal raised position the contact-pieces are held in engagement with each other and the shunt-circuit is closed. When the body 27 is moved downwardly by a blow or impact of a moving body on the rail 1, the contact-piece 37 is permitted to move out of engagement with the contact-piece 36 so that the shunt-circuit is opened. Simultaneously, the armature 33 is moved quickly away from the poles so that an electrical impulse is generated in the coils and passes along the circuit made through the wires 35. l/Vhen the body 27 is again moved up to its normal position the shunt-circuit is closed, so that the electrical impulse generated by the armature in moving toward the poles passes mainly through the shunt-circuit instead of the circuit through the wires 35. The shunt-switch thus causes the principal impulses in the latter circuit to be unidirectional. It also enables several of the generators to be connected in series in the same circuit without the necessity of the impulses produced by one of the generators passing through the coils of the others in the circuit.

From the foregoing the essential characteristics of my invention will be apparent. It should be especially noted that the impact-receiving body is relatively massive and should be of a material having considerable elasticity. The term elastic as herein em ployed is used in the strictly technical sense,

as denoting that property of solid bodies by which they tend to resume their normal form after being distorted by the application of external forces and the distorting forces removed. It will be understood that the rail or rails to which my devices are connected are the usual railway track rails, laid on a solid roadbed in the ordinary manner, and thus held in a substantially fixed position. In the operation of my mechanism no bodily or molar movements of the rail necessarily occur. The motion that is utilized is essentially a molecular movement in so far as its transmission through the rail is concerned. Although the steel ordinarily employed in rails is not perfectly elastic, it is sufficiently so to exhibit in a marked degree the described phenomenon. The mechanical or molar force from the car-wheels becomes in the rail a molecular force, being transmitted through the rail as a compressional wave, and its propagation therein occurring in the same manner as would sound-waves in the same material. By my mechanism the molecular motion in the rail is transformed into a molar or mechanical motion of the receiving-body, and is thus made available for the actuation of mechanical signaling or signal-controlling means.

Now, having described my invention, what I claim and desire to secure by Letters Patent is:

1. The combination with a railway trackrail, of a casing suspended beneath the rail and supported solely therefrom, a relatively massive receiving-body disposed within the casing and movable bodily and rectilinearly downward away from the rail, means supported by the casing and pressing the receiving-body yieldingly toward the rail, a transmitting-member engaging the rail and normally engaged by the receiving-body, and flexible means connecting the transmittingmember and easing.

2. The combination with a fixedly-held rail of elastic material subject to percussion from moving objects, of a relatively massive body arranged at the opposite side of the rail from the percussion-receiving side there of and movable bodily and rectilinearly away from the rail, and means supported solely from the rail and pressing said body yieldingly toward the rail.

3. The combination with a fixedly-held rail subject to the impact of moving objects, of a relatively massive receiving-body arranged at that side of the rail opposite the impact-receiving side thereof and movable bodily and rectilinearly away from and toward the rail, yieldable Supporting means for said receiving-body, said supporting means carried solely by the rail, and means for suppressing the transmission to said supporting means of impact-waves from the body of the rail.

4:. The combination with a railway trackrail, of a casing, means yieldingly connecting the rail and casing and forming the sole support for the latter, a massive member disposed within the casing and movable relatively thereto toward and away from the rail, a spring supported by the casing and pressing said member yieldingly toward the rail, and an intermediate elastic-solid impact-wave-transmitting member disposed between the rail and said massive member and normally contacting with both.

5. The combination with a relativelyfixed rail subject to the impact of wheels moving over the same of a massive receiving-body disposed beneath the rail and movable bodily and rectilinearly toward and away from the rail, impact-wave-transmitting means between the rail and said receiving-body, yielding means constantly pressing said receiving-body toward the rail, a support for said yielding means, and means for sustaining said support solely from the rail, said sustaining means including impactwave-suppressing parts.

6. Signal actuating means comprising a track-rail subject to the impact of moving objects, a massive impact-wave-receiving body disposed adjacent to the rail, a yieldable support for said body pressing the same constantly toward the rail, and sustaining means for said support connected with the rail and partaking of all bodily movement thereof.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto subscribed my name in the presence of two witnesses.

HENRY A. HOESGHEN.

Witnesses:

D. O. BARNELL,

A. R. MITCHELL.

Copies of this patent may be obtained for five cents each, by addressing the Commissioner of Patents, Washington, D. 0. 

